sons

becomes fully realized. One of my favourite examples of this is Overwatch’s Widowmaker. Shallowly, she is a beautiful woman who kills people, and is therefore a Femme Fatale (she’s even French!)—but if you’re a lore junkie (like me), you’re probably aware that Blizzard has slowly been revealing various aspects of the Overwatch backstory. In Widowmaker’s case, she was once a woman subjected to torture, brainwashing, and experimentation by a terrorist cell. As a result, she has seemingly become a sociopath obsessed with using the act of killing as a means to feel any form of emotion. This places reason behind her actions, and gives her a distinct motivation—as opposed to one pre-conceived by a stereotype. It may not be the most complex character development, but it does put her on the path leading towards being a fully developed character.

Surprisingly, this kind of stereotype evolution is fairly exclusive to the Femme Fatale, as most stereotypes remain stagnant. So why, then, did this evolution occur? As someone who is obsessed with both classical literature as well as popular culture/fiction, | can theorize, but | can’t present any solid concrete answer. It is probable that the Femme Fatale evolved due to society’s changing impression of women and femininity in general. What was once seen as something to be monitored and carefully cultivated was later regarded with fear, because it presented a danger to masculine defined morality. That sense of danger then naturally progressed from being an exclusive type of feminine danger to becoming synonymous with an overall sense of danger. The impression of women evolved from at first simply being weak, and later being portrayed as capable in their own way of presenting a threat, and that then progressed to women being seen as human

beings just as capable of violence as anyone else.

In a sense, the Femme Fatale isn’t necessarily a symbol of feminine oppression, but is really

a measure by which we can see the female

influence within society changing and evolving.